Mexico border fence doesn't stop Mother's Day reunions

Fence doesn't stop bittersweet reunionsFamilies mark Mexico's Mother's Day at a kinder part of the southern border

ASHLEY SURDIN, Washington Post

Published 5:30 am, Monday, May 12, 2008

Photo: SARAH I. VOISIN, WASHINGTON POST

Image 1of/1

Caption

Close

Image 1 of 1

Francelia Menchaca drove with her family from Phoenix to the Tijuana border to see her mother at the fence on Saturday.

Francelia Menchaca drove with her family from Phoenix to the Tijuana border to see her mother at the fence on Saturday.

Photo: SARAH I. VOISIN, WASHINGTON POST

Mexico border fence doesn't stop Mother's Day reunions

1 / 1

Back to Gallery

You can walk to the U.S. border, Francelia Menchaca's immigration lawyer advised her, but don't put your fingers through its fence. It may hinder her immigration paperwork, the lawyer said.

But when, after a year apart, Menchaca's mother arrived in her flowered straw hat to the border in Tijuana on Saturday and put her small, wrinkled hands up to the cast-iron gate, Menchaca reached out and touched them.

"Were you anxious to touch my hand?" Menchaca asked in Spanish. Tears stood on her lashes.

"Yes," said her mother, Francisca Rodriguez, a resident of Tijuana, as her three grandchildren, including a 10-month-old girl she had never seen, strained to be near her.

The Menchacas, who drove from Phoenix, are among those who gather here annually on Mexico's Mother's Day along the kinder portion of an otherwise unforgiving border that separates the United States and Mexico.

For nearly 2,000 miles, the boundary rolls from the tip of Texas westward through the foot of California. But in Tijuana, just before the line juts out and sinks into the Pacific Ocean, it eases into a rusty, weather-beaten fence.

Flanked by the U.S. Border Field Park on one side and Playa de Tijuana on the other, the 10-foot-high fence offers a modest opening here and there, just wide enough to slip a hand or a homemade taco through.

Safe gathering spots such as these are few along this increasingly violent boundary, and Saturday may mark the last time families can use them. Amid escalating drug wars — which have recently erupted in bloody nighttime and daytime street shootouts, sending people into hiding in their homes — officials are fortifying the border.

Within the next few weeks, the U.S. government will build more fences in this beachside area. The idea anguishes visitors such as Rodriguez.

"We're hoping that by next year, they have their immigration papers," she said, clutching a family photo album, as her grandchildren gathered daisies for her and pushed them through the fence.